


Chemicals

by TheSaladMonster



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, MaryxJohn, Sherlock - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:10:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8043769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaladMonster/pseuds/TheSaladMonster
Summary: 'Thank you for showing me my heart when I thought I had none, and thank you for trusting in me when no-one else ever would'





	Chemicals

**Author's Note:**

> [AN: I'm evil, I know. And I'm apologising beforehand.]
> 
> WARNING: Suicide/Main Character Death/Drug Abuse

“Sherlock?” I walked through the door of the apartment, hoping to find him. “Sherlock, where are you?”

"Nngah-” I heard a strained gasp come from the living room and I rushed back.  
Then I saw him.  
Behind his chair, the long slender body of Sherlock Holmes lay on the floor. His muscles were twitching and spasming and he couldn’t lay still. Eyes open and bloodshot, his arms were reaching out towards me.   
For a moment I just froze in complete and utter shock.  
The muted tones of the room started to shift and sway, blurring out all the dusty furniture to focus solely on the half broken soul with shaking hands trying to grasp at my clothes. Trembling, my mind finally caught up with the rest of my body and I started to panic as I tried to kneel next to him.

"Joh-gaah-” His eyes creased up in immense pain as he gasped out what sounded like an attempt to say my name. His strained words and helpless groans made my breathing heighten as I realised how dangerous the situation really was.

“Sherlock stay with me… Sherl-Sherlock-”   
Why wasn’t I calm?   
I’d done this before, I was a doctor - this was what I did. However, somehow his fragile, shaking body laying in front of me caused me to stutter my words, to enter a state of intense panic. All my senses were blurred and I couldn’t focus.  
Stay calm John, stay calm.

I put my two fingers up against Sherlock’s porcelain neck to check his pulse. It was crazily high, dangerously high.

"It’s alright Sherlock, I’m calling the ambulance- it’s John, I’m here Sherlock…” 

I fumbled through my coat pocket for my phone but my hands were sweaty and all I could focus on was the constant cries of pain echoing throughout my mind.   
Oh Sherlock, oh god Sherlock.   
What have you done...

“J-Joh… Joh-” His face reflected how much effort and aching it had taken to simply mouth my name but he was still in such a state of disrepair, still twitching and gasping. 

After too many seconds, my hands managed to grab hold of my phone. Sweating and trembling I felt my fingers involuntarily type the three numbers I hoped I’d never have to call.  
The operator’s short, sharp, voice still couldn’t quite mask the agonisingly raw moans resounding from behind me.  
“T-tah-two.. Two O-one B Baker Str-street.” Her reassuring repetition of ‘ambulance’ should have calmed me, but my words were shaky and my voice started to break as I spoke. I just couldn’t seem to get the words out of my mouth, I was in so much shock and panic. I hung up with a racing torture inside my mind and willed them to come as soon as possible.

Head.  
That’s correct John.  
Shield his head.  
I hobbled over to pick up Sherlock to put him down somewhere safer and as I started to, I just held him for a little while. Even while broken, he was still so beautiful. The rings of red and veins threading to bleed into his iris could not take away from how captivating the rockpools of blue-green were when you looked at them.  
But I could see that he was fighting for air, and as I lifted him up, with all my physical and emotion strength, I noticed the needle inserted into his vein. 

Sherlock.   
Oh dear god no.

I set him down on the sofa and let his head rest upon my lap, leaving him something soft to protect his skull. Running my fingers through his tangled mop of hair, I brushed the matted locks away from his face. That once calm and collected face that was now contorted into a whole spectrum of shades of agony.

“J-jj…” He was trying to speak now, but every breath he took felt like it had used up all of his energy, his mouth forming words that he could not speak. “Joh- I nnnn-ahgh need…”

“What do you need? Sherlock? Come on now, talk to me.” My words were unusually fast as I persuaded him to carry on. I needed to keep him talking, needed to keep his consciousness intact.

"I nnn-need you t-to know-aagth” His arms once again reached out towards me, his fingertips brushing my cheek so very gently before his arm jerked and forced itself back down. “That I.. I love you.”

I was so taken aback by this that for a short moment my panic halted as I gazed over at him. For then, for then I saw the heart beneath the brain- I always knew it was there but now it was yanked out of it’s stone ribcage and placed before me.  
He loved me.  
And-and I…  
But Mary.

Mary: my distraction from the heartache when I thought that-that I’d never see him again. I needed to get rid of the awful brokenness inside of me, and she was there.   
Mary was there when nobody else was.  
She had brightened me up, but she had never meant as much to me as Sherlock did.  
No-one had ever come close to him.

I-I had loved him.

I did love him.

The combination of his confession and ultimate, excruciating pain brought on a deep sob as I pulled his boney torso closer. I held him so tightly, feeling his reassuringly warm chest curl into my own for what I hoped would not be the last time. But-

"Oh Sherlock… I love and care for you more than you could ever know, and seeing you like this breaks my heart” I blinked away another tear as I said what I’d been wanting to say for such a long time.

A slight curl on the right side of his mouth was all he could manage before his body gave into the pain once more. He had used all his strength and power just to try to smile for me. He just wanted to make me even a small bit happy by seeming calm himself, but his movements disagreed. His body doubled over as he let out a groan of complete and utter agony.

"Asaa-gurrgh…” 

Sentiment.  
It really was a defect  
The defect that ripped a piece of my inside every time I heard his constant cries, and each time I felt him jerk in my arms. It killed me to look at his beautiful face in such a state but I couldn’t look away. He was deathly pale and was taking in so much air he was almost choking on it. 

"John W-Watson…” Full words drained him more than ever as he struggled to carry on. “I have laah-lost. I h-have finally lost…”

The great consulting detective’s eyes were half lidded as he spoke, his body becoming hot and limp within my arms.   
So limp.

"Sherlock?!” I almost shouted at him as I willed him to keep going, to persevere. “Sherlock stay here, I’m here- you’re going to be alright, keep talking to me.”

His eyes were closing and his mouth was no longer strong enough to even form the shape of a single word.

"Sherlock!!” I couldn’t help but shout, I was scared. So, so scared. I just wanted him to live- the one person I had ever loved that was now dying in my arms, in front of my very own eyes.

Seconds went by in hours until I heard the paramedics come in, their relentless heavy footsteps resounding around the whole apartment. Everything seemed to go past my eyes so very quickly from then on. He was in my arms, he was on a stretcher and suddenly I was running down the all too familiar stairs after the ambulance crew. I sprinted out into the road, blind to any obstructions in my way. 

I needed to see him again, I had to.

Pushing through the glare of the reflective paramedics, I caught a glimpse of his limp, pale body and the slight flutter of his eyelids. 

"Help! No! I need to- I need to see him, I NEED- you don’t understand!” My pleas fell on deaf ears as the paramedics formed a tight crowd around Sherlock. The only words I could pick out were ‘fatal’ and 'close’ from the babble but I knew it was bad, I knew he was dying.  
I got as close as I could, pressing forward to get to my Sherlock until the ambulance doors shut in front of me and they drove away.

I tried to run after the fluorescent blur in the distance but my legs didn’t want to move. My pulse started to heighten, my breathing started to increase - my heart pumping so fast I felt as if I was sure to collapse. Leaning against a lamppost, I tried to catch my breath but I still couldn’t think straight and my pulse continued to race.

Sherlock.

My Sherlock.

Had gone.

Just like that.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"He was a chemist, he knew his limits.” The doctor sighed as she shuffled in her black swivel chair, seat worn down to white after years of giving devastating news.

"Y-yes?” I stuttered, mouth frozen up in trauma, tongue lacking saliva.

"He knew he was going to die…”

It was hard to even get out a sound as her words crashed upon my ears. I knew I had to speak but words just made things even more real than they should have been to begin with. The doctor waited with a patient smile for me to force out a few words.

“But how-?” She looked down at her notes, hesitating before looking back up again.

"I’m afraid it was a fatal dosage Dr Watson, no one could have survived it.  
Not even Sherlock Holmes.” 

Sherlock Holmes.  
His name.  
Deathly quiet filled the room completely and the true meaning of her words leaked into my broken heart like poison being pushed into a vein through a syringe.

It wasn’t just an overdose.  
Not at all.

It felt as if all the colour had been drained out of the freezing cold hospital office room whilst I sat in painfully loud silence.

The day had been more than awful.  
Everyone had been here.  
I’d seen the British intelligence with tears in his eyes, a grown policeman break down in a hospital room and I’d seen myself disintegrate with every single minute that went by without him.

"But he left you something.” Doctor Turner’s voice broke the seemingly eternal silence as she brought out a small, sealed, evidence bag.  
“A note.”

A note?  
I took it from her and opened it up with shaky hands, pulling out the paper inside. 

'My dear John Watson'

Even the thought of him writing my name with his fountain pen at that stained desk made me tear up.

'People write notes beforehand, don’t they. Some kind of explanation.

He really did know.

'There is only one thing I can explain, John. I have lost this game. You have succeeded. You have everything you’ve ever wanted.’

His last words, where he told me he had lost and oh God- Sherlock how didn’t you see how much you meant to me.

'I will never have everything, John- I will never have you.’

The hospital glare faded until I forgot where I was completely. I wish, I just wish- I wished he could have known.

'I wish you all the happiness that I could not bring to you, and all the love that I could not show towards you.’

A single tear rolled down my cheek as I heard his voice in my mind reciting these words. It would be soft, and deep, and loving. He would look me straight in the eye with one of his captivating gazes and allow me to feel again.

'Thank you for showing me my heart when I thought I had none, and thank you for trusting in me when no-one else ever would.’

The last few sentences became blurry as I thought about all the times I could have told him and all the things I should have said. There was nothing I could do now but cling to a memory.

'But now I have lost.  
-SH’


End file.
